Bill Gates-Backed Social Recommendation App Likewise Now Available for iOS and Android (axios.com)

Bill Gates is not giving up on saving the world, but he is helping launch a new social recommendation engine. Likewise, as the iOS and Android app is known, is designed to be a place to get trusted recommendations on everything from restaurants to books, movies and TV shows. From a report: It won't cure polio or fix the U.S. education system, but Likewise could fill a niche helping people keep track of the books and TV shows their friends recommend as well as to discover new places. The free app, which launches today, began as the brainchild of Larry Cohen, a longtime Gates aide who serves as CEO of Gates Ventures. The Microsoft co-founder is funding the Bellevue, Wash.-based company, which has been working for nearly a year and has about 20 employees. "It's not the next Office, but there's a real need here," Cohen told Axios. Cohen is chairman of Likewise, with his onetime Microsoft colleague Ian Morris serving as CEO.

Comments

1984 was not a suggestion, it was a warning.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are these people doing?

Re:What the world needed

[Jason Levine]

I ran a review/rating site over a decade ago. It was the first real website I ever launched and its purpose was to collect reviews and ratings on As Seen On TV products. I had quite a collection of positive and negative reviews on a lot of products. (Including some scary reviews such as multiple claims of chemical burns from a popular hair removal product that was still available last I checked.) Even back then, I'd get a "mysterious" influx of positive reviews for products that all were essentially the same. These all invariably came from the same IP address. Nowadays, I'm sure those astroturfing posts could vary the wording and be run from different IP addresses all to hide the fact that the reviews were faked.

I know some review sites, like Yelp, have underhanded practices, but I don't envy the honest review sites out there. You constantly need to watch out for and take down fake reviews otherwise any real reviews on your site will just look faked as well. That site will always have a special place in my heart as the first website I ever ran, but I definitely don't miss the work that came from running that site.